Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

** 13-Jun-2021 World View: Committing Treason

(06-13-2021, 04:00 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: > The difference between the US and China and Cuba goes far beyond
> form. As for stability, the political order in China is now
> approaching 72 years. Stability can arise from repression. As for
> the language of a US-style Constitution protecting human rights,
> most of Stalin's 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union is a
> plagiary of ours (if with plenty of weasel words and phrases that
> gut human rights and civil liberties). How well our Constitution
> protects our liberties and fair process depends upon how willing
> our top leaders are to accommodate the Constitution. Contrast
> Donald Trump with Gerald Ford on that.

The US Constitutional government has survived two generational crisis
wars, which China, Russia and Cuba have not.

It was the Democrats who "committed treason" by claiming for four
years that Trump's victory was illegitimate. It was the Democrats who
lied to the Fisa court. It was Democrats who perpetrated the Russia
hoax. It was the Democrats who perpetrated the Ukraine hoax. It was
the Democrats who flooded the country with 80 million blank ballots
and hacked Dominion voting machines, and used them to rig the 2020
election. And it's the Democrats who have engineered a Stalinist
censorship regime with no purpose except to censor conservative
voices, including 75 million hated Trump voters.

[pbrower2a]

(06-13-2021, 05:01 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 13-Jun-2021 World View: Committing Treason

(06-13-2021, 04:00 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: >   The difference between the US and China and Cuba goes far beyond
>   form.  As for stability, the political order in China is now
>   approaching 72 years. Stability can arise from repression. As for
>   the language of a US-style Constitution protecting human rights,
>   most of Stalin's 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union is a
>   plagiary of ours (if with plenty of weasel words and phrases that
>   gut human rights and civil liberties). How well our Constitution
>   protects our liberties and fair process depends upon how willing
>   our top leaders are to accommodate the Constitution. Contrast
>   Donald Trump with Gerald Ford on that.

The US Constitutional government has survived two generational crisis
wars, which China, Russia and Cuba have not.

Sears has been in existence far longer than Wal*Mart. You tell me which one you have some chance of shopping in at the end of this year. 

The People's Republic of China is on the brink of lasting longer than the Soviet Union. North Korea has lasted longer than the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union looked indestructible going into the 1980's. Not that that means much other than great human tragedy.

As late as the morning of January 6, 2021 I could not imagine a riotous mob storming the Capitol Building in an effort to nullify an election whose results that mob disliked. Did you see anything of the sort in 2001 with Gore supporters or in 2017 with Hillary supporters? Some people respect legal formalities and some people do not. Now that people with impressive achievements and fairly-high social class have done something unthinkable six months ago, we can only hope that the consequences for trying such a stunt again are personal ruin. 

Surely you do not want my side doing 'our' equivalent  of the Capitol Putsch of January 6, 2021 in the wake of a heated election. Well, do you?    

Quote:It was the Democrats who "committed treason" by claiming for four
years that Trump's victory was illegitimate.  It was the Democrats who
lied to the Fisa court.  It was Democrats who perpetrated the Russia
hoax.  It was the Democrats who perpetrated the Ukraine hoax.  It was
the Democrats who flooded the country with 80 million blank ballots
and hacked Dominion voting machines, and used them to rig the 2020
election.  And it's the Democrats who have engineered a Stalinist
censorship regime with no purpose except to censor conservative
voices, including 75 million hated Trump voters.

We had our suspicions but we couldn't prove anything. We could complain all we wanted. We could hone an electoral message. Yup, OJ Simpson probably did kill Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman, but evidence wasn't strong enough. That happens, and that is how we do criminal trials. Guilty people occasionally walk. 

Now if you see Wayne County, Michigan political figures discarding ballots into  the Detroit River on Election Night instead of recognizing ballots that favor Republicans, then maybe we need to nullify some Democratic wins that might depend upon such happening.  The analogy in sports judging applies: if you cheat while winning, then you forfeit your win. (OK, voting devices in Michigan are designed to fit standards for auditing cash and other fungible assets that tempt crooks).  Also in Michigan -- Democrats changed their voter access material so that it could not be hacked. Beat-the-cheat strategies are always acceptable in any contest. If it is acceptable for gambling casinos to take measures against people putting slugs into slot machines, using marked cards, or introducing counterfeit chips, then it is OK for Parties to set traps for cheats.     

Trump did better than most people expected, but he still came up short. He did better than late polling indicated. 

Don't be fooled about any 'censorship' of conservative ideas. People face no problems in opposing abortion, supporting 'gun rights', advocating lower taxes and spending, privatizing everything possible, clamping down on immigration, or pushing the evisceration of trade unions. All of that remains within the realm of free speech. "Hang Mike Pence!" is abominable speech whether it comes from a Marxist-Leninist or from a fascist. Violence against elected officials and even election volunteers rips at the assumption of electoral choice. 

Donald Trump is simply a horrible person, whatever one thinks of his political agenda. We have had plenty of conservative pols with solid moral compasses. One of those, had he been elected in 2016, would have almost certainly won in 2020 if at all competent. The big test would be on COVID-19, on which Donald Trump was a catastrophic failure.

Character matters. Character is the difference between marital loyalty and cheating on a spouse. Character is the difference between taking a cut of the money that you count and living on a modest salary. Character is the difference between telling  convenient, attractive falsehoods and telling the truth when telling the truth makes one look bad. Character is the difference between telling ethnic jokes and figuring out that "Cole" might really be "Kowalski". Character is the difference between doing business that works for both sides in a deal and getting a killing from a one-time fleece. Character is not messing with vulnerable children even if one can get away with it. 

Plenty of people have character, and they have miserable jobs as farm laborers, checker-cashiers, cleaners, phone solicitors, assembly-line workers... and the only bad consequences that they get in life is poverty. It's the people of bad character who go bigger and bigger into their depravity and make things all the more tragic because they mess things up for far more people. They crash businesses and economies. They charm their way into responsibilities that ensure calamity (I'm thinking of General George Armstrong Custer). They cut corners  and end up with a bolt on a rear axle that can pierce a gas tank (the infamous Ford Pinto). Or perhaps they use some substandard steel on a ship going into iceberg-infested waters (RMS Titanic). Or they get caught "with a live boy or a dead woman" in politics. Or, like Bill Cosby, they use date-rape drugs to get them the opportunity to... well, we know what happened, don't we?

So said Herodotus: Character is destiny. Character may be the difference between stoking the furnaces of an ocean liner that does not sink and being the captain who tries to make a speed record for crossing the Atlantic during iceberg season. The problem with the captain of the ship that (RMS Titanic) takes an iceberg-prone course is that one takes the fellows who stoke the engines down to Davey Jones' Locker with him.

[David Horn]

(06-13-2021, 05:01 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 13-Jun-2021 World View: Committing Treason

It was the Democrats who "committed treason" by claiming for four years that Trump's victory was illegitimate.  It was the Democrats who lied to the Fisa court.  It was Democrats who perpetrated the Russia hoax.  It was the Democrats who perpetrated the Ukraine hoax.  It was the Democrats who flooded the country with 80 million blank ballots and hacked Dominion voting machines, and used them to rig the 2020 election.  And it's the Democrats who have engineered a Stalinist censorship regime with no purpose except to censor conservative voices, including 75 million hated Trump voters.

My God John.  Get some other sources, if this is what you actually believe.  Going down your list:

• No one thinks 2016 was illegitimate, just incredibly stupid.  
  
• The FISA, not Fisa, court issue is what exactly?  Pleadings are Top Secret by law, so what you think you know is worthless.  
  
• The supposed hoaxes are well documented.  That they were demagogued makes that no less true.
  
• And please, get help on the phony ballots and rigged voting machine issue which is firmly in far-distant la-la-land.  There is not only no evidence to support it, there is vast evidence to oppose it -- surprising given it's hard to prove a negative.
  
• And last but not least, how are conservative voices being censored when entire news organizations exist to do nothing but blast-out even the most bizarre conservative rantings?
  

You might think about stepping away from all this for a while and getting a life.

[pbrower2a]

(06-14-2021, 10:09 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(06-13-2021, 05:01 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 13-Jun-2021 World View: Committing Treason

It was the Democrats who "committed treason" by claiming for four years that Trump's victory was illegitimate.  It was the Democrats who lied to the Fisa court.  It was Democrats who perpetrated the Russia hoax.  It was the Democrats who perpetrated the Ukraine hoax.  It was the Democrats who flooded the country with 80 million blank ballots and hacked Dominion voting machines, and used them to rig the 2020 election.  And it's the Democrats who have engineered a Stalinist censorship regime with no purpose except to censor conservative voices, including 75 million hated Trump voters.

My God John.  Get some other sources, if this is what you actually believe.  Going down your list:

• No one thinks 2016 was illegitimate, just incredibly stupid.  
  
• The FISA, not Fisa, court issue is what exactly?  Pleadings are Top Secret by law, so what you think you know is worthless.  
  
• The supposed hoaxes are well documented.  That they were demagogued makes that no less true.
  
• And please, get help on the phony ballots and rigged voting machine issue which is firmly in far-distant la-la-land.  There is not only no evidence to support it, there is vast evidence to oppose it -- surprising given it's hard to prove a negative.
  
• And last but not least, how are conservative voices being censored when entire news organizations exist to do nothing but blast-out even the most bizarre conservative rantings?
  

You might think about stepping away from all this for a while and getting a life.

I concur with this. I live in Michigan, and I have cause to believe that someone hacked the Democrats' voter-outreach program and had us contacting Republicans to get out their vote. We cannot determine who did it. The Michigan Democratic party did change things so that although political allies such as unions and ethnic-advocacy groups can use our data, they cannot alter our. That beat-the-cheat practice helped us in 2018. COVID-19 stopped our usual outreach in 2020. 2022? It's back to normal. 

I have a simple explanation of the difference between 2016 and 2020. All that really changed between 2016 and 2020 was a generational replacement in the electorate due to death and debility. We know that voters over 55 are the bulk of people who leave the electorate due to death. 

As an illustration, here is how COVID-19 kills based upon age:



Respiratory infections that children slough off with ease are much more dangerous to older people. Respiratory infections are often the stab-in-the-back killer for people already weakened by diabetes, HIV/AIDS, cancer, strokes, congestive heart disease, mental deterioration, and organ failure. Pneumonia is a common killer on death certificates. My experience has been that every respiratory bug out there has hit me harder every time, and if I don't die of some sudden trauma I can predict that my death certificate will have 'pneumonia' on it among other causes.

In my case I know the causes of death of my parents and grandparents. I'm not quite sure of what killed my maternal grandmother, but she had cancer at one time... otherwise I know. 

paternal grandfather, age 86 -- congestive heart failure, had colon cancer. 
paternal grandmother, age 67 -- complications of diabetes that set in in childhood. 
paternal grandfather, 82 -- uremic poisoning. He had gout, and so do I. 
maternal grandmother, 82 -- I will need to check the public record at the county seat. 
father, 84 -- capillary damage related perhaps to late-onset diabetes. He enjoyed his beer and ice cream and did not give them up early enough.
mother, 83 -- Parkinsonism. 

My father and grandfather both had early stages of colon cancer, so I get colon screens. I will soon be on some antidepressants that preclude alcohol (I still have three "greenies" to go and a bottle of wine, and I chose those for sentimental reasons as my last drinks; my brother makes mead as a hobby and I might want a sample of it). I found ice cream rather easy to give up. 

So much for the personal.  


Now let's look at overall death rates. 


 

Death rates rise from adolescence, but they remain low and nearly static from about 20 to 40. Then they rise, and the curve rises rapidly starting around 50. Before age 40, the vast majority of deaths are sudden deaths from trauma. After age 40, bad habits start killing people. The peak age for death for men seems to be about 87, and for women about 91. After those ages, death rates continue to rise, but the number of people still around to die of any causes whatsoever falls rapidly. 

Voting age is 18 to... whatever, but it is obvious enough that although new voters are typically under 50, voters are departing from the electorate in increasing numbers from then. If voters over 55 predictably die off and are about 5% more R than D (this is true for the Silent, Boomers, and early-wave X) and voters under 40 are about 20% more D than R, then this alone suggests about a 1.6% shift from 2016 to 2020 from R to D. 

It is easy to see 2020 as a freakish year in political life in America due to COVID-19, and the effects of COVID-19 upon the vote are unclear. But note well: there was much less electioneering of the traditional press-the-flesh type. The Trump campaign was more willing to take chances with mass rallies, but states generally accommodated the reality of COVID-19 by ensuring that people could vote more easily by absentee ballot or by mail. 

Democrats would like to believe that they won in 2020 because Donald Trump was a failure as President, but the close election suggests that voting totals indicate that demographics made the difference between 2016 and 2020. 

A shift of 1.6% of the vote from R to D would have been enough to swing Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin from Trump victories to Trump losses, and such would have been enough to make Joe Biden President. A crude use of this stat would have suggested that Florida would go against him... but Trump actually gained in Florida with respect to the national average. The shift in votes happened elsewhere, and he lost Arizona, Georgia, and NE-02 instead, so that is practically a wash.  

It's all demographics, and that is what happens when the COVID-19 plague reduces the election to demographics while people do not really change their minds. The minds available for deciding how to vote were somewhat different in 2020 from what they were in 2016. That was the slight, sibtle difference. 

Yes, David, conservative ideas are not getting censored under the Biden Administration, although people involved in the Putsch of January 6 can expect legal consequences including convictions, jail terms, fines, probation, and the loss of the right to vote. Oh, yes -- they are on the no-fly list for having committed an act of political violence, so that might mess up some careers that require one to fly. I guess that means that they aren't going to get to visit Alaska or Hawaii.  Any groups that coordinated the Putsch night be subjected to RICO prosecutions whose results I cannot yet predict. That will have little effect upon the electorate as it involves few people. Proud Boys? They just landed on the Canadian list of groups banned for terrorism along with such charming people as al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, ISIS/Daeth, Tamil Tigers, Shining Path, and Aum Shinrikyo. So if you want to travel between Michigan and New England or upstate New York, you can no longer take the shortcut through southern Ontario or take a side trip to Toronto. You are stuck with Toledo, Cleveland, and Erie instead.  

Some people still want an abortion ban, few restrictions on guns and ammunition, young-earth creationism as the sole explanation of prehistory, prohibitions of same-sex and interracial marriage, and a return to the economic ways of the Gilded Age or at least its last hurrah of the 1920's. Such people skew old, and one demographic reality can ruin any entity that relies upon an elderly clientele not a captive audience due to age: the aging of its clientele into the "good night" about which the poet Dylan Thomas warned us. 

Then again, people don't listen to the music of Lawrence Welk as they used to.

[pbrower2a]

Almost a year ago I made a projection of the 2020 election based upon the polling matchups between Biden and Trump.

Quote:This is more a projection than a poll.

Using the categories of electoral-vote.com, solid dark shades are for leads in excess of 10% (strong), medium solid shades are for leads of at least 5% but less than 10% (weak), and medium shades around  something light gray (this site allows pale shades, but not frames) are for less than 5% (barely). 4% is the usual margin of error, although I would be tempted to say that for such states as Alaska, Montana, and Texas I would assign a bigger margin of error -- 5% or even 6%.

The map, using the criteria of electoral-vote.com but Atlas coloration:



Strong Trump (margin 10% or greater)
Weak Trump (margin 5-9.9%)
Barely Trump (margin under 5%)
exact tie -- white
Barely Biden (margin under 5%)
Weak Biden (margin 5-9.9%)
Strong Biden (margin 10% or greater)

Note that this is really a projection that takes account of states' electoral histories as well as short-term polling. In contrast to the recent polls that have shown a sharp turn away from Trump in the last two weeks or so, this projection makes the assumption that people who made such a turn away from Trump are at most 'shaky' voters for Biden and are likely to return to Trump as the news becomes less inflamed.  So if Biden made recent gains, then how solid are those? Not quite as solid as those ready to vote for him in  April, let alone January. That Arizona hasn't voted for a Democratic nominee for President since 1996 and not in a real binary election for President in that state (Strom Thurmond wasn't even on the ballot in Arizona in 1948) or that Texas hasn't voted for a Democratic nominee for President since 1976 matters greatly. That Iowa and Ohio voted for Trump by large margins in 2016 also matters.

https://www.cbsnews.com/2020-us-election...00-10abc1f

While surveying voters across the country is an integral part of the Battleground Tracker, this is more than your typical poll. It's really a big data project. We combine polling, voter files (from L2 Political), U.S. Census data, and historical trends to get a clear picture of what's going on in each state.

Here's how we put together that combination:

We know which candidates different types of voters are supporting from our polling, which includes much larger sample sizes — tens of thousands — than a typical poll;
We know how many people like them are in each state and county, as well as their turnout history, from voter files and Census data;
And we know each state's previous election results, which enables us to anchor our 2020 estimates to recent history.

This approach achieves better estimates in states without as much polling. In 2016, for example, scarce polling in certain states like Michigan or Wisconsin led some to believe they were not as competitive as they turned out to be. That picture might have been improved by considering that these states were full of the same kinds of voters shifting to the Republican Party elsewhere.

We don't know who will change their minds at the last minute -- or how.

http://generational-theory.com/forum/thr...l#pid55014

It was rosier for Biden than reality would be. This suggests that Donald trump's campaign picked up some edges that Biden couldn't. Democrats typically rely more heavily upon volunteers canvassing for votes -- which would prove impossible in 2020. Trump was more willing to put lives at risk, including his own with mass rallies that often proved super-spreader events for COVID-19. The Grim Reaper was in attendance at all of those events.

Category differences:

AS. MO, SC  solid Trump wins to Trump blow-outs
IA, OH, TX  bare Trump wins to solid Trump wins
FL solid Biden win to bare Trump win
NC bare Biden win to bare Trump win
AZ true toss-up to bare Biden win
MI, PA, WI solid Biden wins to bare Biden wins
MN Biden blow-out  win to Biden solid win
NV Biden blow-out to bare Biden win

... Trump did better than July polling suggested. I take this as an interpretation that he had a late charge that came up just short. He thought that he could win, but he was too far behind to succeed at that. 

  Trump did better than pollsters expected, and here is why:

(CNN)President Joe Biden won the 2020 election as polls suggested he would. His victory, however, ended up being tighter nationally and in a number of swing states than expected. The question of why that happened has dogged pollsters since the election.


On Tuesday, a number of Democratic pollsters (ALG Research, Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group, GBAO Strategies, Global Strategy Group and Normington Petts) put out a statement as to why they think their internal polls were off. It jibes with a lot of the analysis I and others have said publicly.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that the people who aren't answering polls are systematically different than those who do answer the polls. This is likely the case among White voters without a college degree. Additionally, voters who were less likely to turn out but still did seemed to favor former President Donald Trump at higher levels than expected.

Not being able to accurately gauge the preferences of non-college White voters is a huge problem for pollsters. This group has become increasingly Republican the last few cycles and favored Trump by around 30 points this past election cycle. They make up a larger share of the electorate than two key groups individually: voters of color and Whites with a college degree.



Pre-election polls suggested that Biden would make major gains with this group. It didn't happen. (Still, polls did a fairly decent job of gaming out what would happen in the rest of the electorate, such as the shift in Hispanics toward Trump.)

My own initial analysis after the election showed that the polling errors tended to be greatest in states where the non-college White share of the population was largest. It was not the case, however, that in most of these places that pollsters didn't have enough White voters without a college degree in their polls.

[pbrower2a]

Question: will the low-information white voters of 2020 be sympathetic to a Trump-like agenda, or will they realize that they have been had?

[David Horn]

(06-14-2021, 02:30 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Question: will the low-information white voters of 2020 be sympathetic to a Trump-like agenda, or will they realize that they have been had?

I suspect it will hold for the immediate future ... maybe even longer.  The media environment is so fractured that getting news from a biased source that's fully believed isn't gong to self correct just because it's nonsense.  We're all prone to selection bias, but the Trumpists seem to have taken it to a new level.  I'm sure that the fever won't break easily.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 14-Jun-2021 World View: Trump 'illegitimate'

(06-14-2021, 10:09 AM)David Horn Wrote: > My God John. Get some other sources, if this is what you actually
> believe. Going down your list:

> [*]No one thinks 2016 was illegitimate, just incredibly
> stupid.

(06-14-2021, 12:58 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: > I concur with this.

Not surprisingly, you two are completely full of shit.

I keep telling you that you are totally ignorant, and have no idea
what's going on, because you're only allowed to know what your
Democrat Party masters let you know.

Once again: You are totally ignorant.

*** Hillary Clinton: Trump is an ‘illegitimate president’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/...story.html

Hillary Clinton: Trump is an ‘illegitimate president’

September 26, 2019 at 9:03 p.m. UTC

Hillary Clinton dismissed President Trump as an “illegitimate
president” and suggested that “he knows” that he stole the 2016
presidential election in a CBS News interview to be aired Sunday. ...

Clinton was asked whether it angers her that none of the current
Democratic candidates invoke her on the campaign trail while Trump’s
rally crowds still break out into “lock her up” chants.

“No, it doesn’t kill me because he knows he’s an illegitimate
president,” she said. “I believe he understands that the many varying
tactics they used, from voter suppression and voter purging to hacking
to the false stories — he knows that — there were just a bunch of
different reasons why the election turned out like it did.” ...

In June, former president Jimmy Carter used similar language to
diminish Trump’s presidency. Carter said that in his view Trump lost
the 2016 election and was put in office by the Russians. Asked if he
considered Trump to be illegitimate, Carter said, “Based on what I
just said, which I can’t retract.”

[Tim Randal Walker]

It would be difficult for a foreign government to steal a U.S. Presidential election, because the system is decentralized. (this may actually be an unintended advantage of the Electoral College). Nevertheless, I wouldn't be complacent-switching to electronic means for voting suggests that an electoral system could be hacked.

Safer to stick to older method that creates a paper trail that can be audited.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 14-Jun-2021 World View: Paper Trail

(06-14-2021, 06:07 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: > It would be difficult for a foreign government to steal a
> U.S. Presidential election, because the system is
> decentralized. (this may actually be an unintended advantage of
> the Electoral College). Nevertheless, I wouldn't be
> complacent-switching to electronic means for voting suggests that
> an electoral system could be hacked.

> Safer to stick to older method that creates a paper trail that can
> be audited.

I think a lot of people would agree with that.

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 15-Jun-21 World View -- The hysteria over inflation in a deflationary era

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• The hysteria over the Consumer Price Index
  
• Historical consumer price index changes
  
• Understanding inflation, deflation and the CPI
  
• Financial crisis of 2007-2008
  

****
**** The hysteria over the Consumer Price Index
****


Velocity of Money, 1959-2021 (St. Louis Fed)

In mid-May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) published its monthly
computation of the change in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) of 4.2%,
the highest rate since September 2008. This means that consumer
prices had risen 4.2% in the preceding 12 months.

The media went hysterical and started predicting hyperinflation. A
typical media statement by so-called "experts" was some variation of
the following:

<QUOTE>"Inflation exploded in April at an annual rate of
4.2%, the highest rate since Sept 2008, so inflation is already
occurring, and we can expect much higher inflation or
hyperinflation in the next few months!"<END QUOTE>

Long-time readers are aware that I have a low opinion of economists,
and the above statement is one more example. If the inflation
rate was even higher in September 2008, then why wasn't there
hyperinflation in 2009? These "experts" are too dumb to even ask
that question. As it turned out, there was mild deflation in
2009, so the Law of Reversion of the Mean took hold.

Then in mid-June, the BLS reported a CPI increase of 4.99%. Here's
how CNBC reported it:

<QUOTE>"The consumer price index, which represents a basket
including food, energy, groceries, housing costs and sales across
a spectrum of goods, rose 5% from a year ago. Economists surveyed
by Dow Jones had been expecting a gain of 4.7%.

The reading represented the biggest CPI gain since the 5.3%
increase in August 2008, just before the worst of the financial
crisis sent the U.S. spiraling into the worst recession it had
seen since the Great Depression."<END QUOTE>

This was actually a pretty good report, since it balanced the
inflation hysteria with a sober report about what happened in 2009.

However, it didn't stop the hysteria from the so-called "experts" on
TV, who have been predicting hyperinflationary doom, because they just
can't seem to grasp that this CPI change is a temporary spike.

****
**** Historical consumer price index changes
****

The following page contains a table of historical changes in the CPI
month by month for the preceding 12 months, from 1913 to the present:

Historical Consumer Price Index Change

If you'd like, you can copy and paste the table on that page into a
text file or into a spreadsheet, or you can just read the table on the
web page.

You should spend a few minutes studying that table. It shows how the
current spike in inflation is not unusual in the last three decades,
and that there were previous larger spikes that didn't lead to
sustained inflation.

As I've written many times, the "experts" have been consistently wrong
about inflation since 2003, when I started keeping track, and
predicted a deflationary era. For the last 70 quarters, the "experts"
predicted that there would be inflation or super-inflation in the
following quarter, and for 70 quarters they've been wrong every
quarter and I've been right every quarter. And now it's the same
thing all over again.

It would be VERY nice if even one of these "experts" at least
acknowledged that they've been wrong for the last 70 quarters, and
explained why "this time it's different" this quarter. But they never
do.

****
**** Understanding inflation, deflation and the CPI
****

When I first wrote about deflation in 2003, I really didn't understand
what was going on, and in fact I said that inflation is "very
mysterious." But I knew we were in a stock market bubble, and I knew
that public debt was very high, and I knew that we were in a
generational Crisis era, so I assumed that we would be following the
deflationary path of the 1930s, and that we were in a "deflationary
era."

That turned out to be correct. But now, having seen what happened in
the last almost 20 years, I now have a much better idea about what a
"deflationary era" means. It means two things:

• that there will be NO sustained hyperinflation as in the
  1970s, and
  
• the deflationary era will end with a financial crisis that will
  trigger a deflationary crash.

There are two economic measures that define a deflationary era:

• the falling velocity of money, which measures the reluctance
  of people to spend money or increase wages
  
• the rising level of debt, which will lead to a deflationary
  crash.

Both of these economic measures are generational, in the sense that
they occur during generational Crisis eras, and are the opposite of
what occurred in the generational Awakening era of the 1970s. During
the 1970s, people were still recovering from the Great Depression and
public debt was extremely low, so people were willing to incur debt
and spend money, resulting in a high velocity of money in the 1970s,
and inflation.

****
**** Financial crisis of 2007-2008
****

The global financial crisis of 2007-2008 caused many people to go
bankrupt or to lose their homes, and that made people extremely averse
to spending. This reluctance to spend was measured by the velocity of
money, which has been falling sharply since then. You can see that
clearly by the graph at the beginning of this article.

This doesn't cause deflation, but it does put a lid on inflation
during this deflationary era. It also means that when there's a burst
of inflation caused by scarcity, like today, it will not encourage
people to spend more, but instead will cause people to become more
cautious and pull back even further, often resulting in a brief period
of deflation as the scarcity unwinds. This happened in 2009,
following an inflationary spike in 2008.

The second factor, besides velocity of money, is increasing public
debt.

But today, public debt is extremely high and growing. This feeds into
the velocity of money, since people in debt are very reluctant to
spend and pay high prices, which would only increase their debt.

Furthermore, the high public debt leads to the second outcome of a
deflationary era, namely that it ends with a sharp deflationary crash.
This is because of the chain reaction that starts at the beginning of
a financial crisis. As debts come due, people are no longer able to
borrow money to roll debts over, so they have to sell assets and
collect money owed through other people's interlocking debts, and that
forces other people to sell their assets, resulting in a chain
reaction and a full-fledged deflationary spiral.

I was actually expecting this to happen in 2008, with the collapse of
Lehman and other banks. But something happened that I didn't expect
-- that the Fed would flood the markets with "quantitative easing"
(printed money), which provided banks with plenty of liquidity so that
they could lend money to roll debts over. The problem is that this
exacerbated the problem of interlocking debt and extended it around
the world, so that the next crisis won't be resolved by quantitative
easing, especially if it happens in the context of war.

Here's a final ironic point. When the US government "prints money,"
knee-jerk economists say that this will result in "too many dollars
chasing too few goods" and inflation. This was true in the 1970s, but
the opposite is true in a generational Crisis era, which the knee-jerk
economists don't grasp at all. Printing money today does not generate
inflation today. Printing money today increases public debt, which
makes people more cautious and lowers the velocity of money. So
printing money today does not cause inflation. It creates
disinflationary pressure, and eventually will make the deflationary
crash much larger. So printing money today actually causes more
deflation.

You know, I used to think that the amount of money in the economy (M2)
at least had some effect on the inflation rate, but as time has gone
on, I increasingly believe that the amount of money has absolutely
nothing to do with the inflation rate, at least in the American
economy.

The inflation rate is not a monetary phenomenon. It's a generational
phenomenon. It's not the Fed that affects the inflation rate. It's
the people and the mood of the people that affect the inflation rate.

Sources:

• Velocity of M2 Money Stock (M2V) (St Louis Fed, 14-Jun-2021)
  
• Consumer prices jump 5% in May, fastest pace since the summer of 2008 (CNBC, 10-Jun-2021)

Related Articles:

• Understanding deflation: Why there's less money in the world today than a month ago. (10-Sep-2007)
  
  
• Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke delivers incredibly bizarre speech on inflation (11-Jul-2007)
  
  
• The velocity of money keeps plummeting, indicating no economic growth (04-Mar-2017)
  
  
• German 10 year bund yield goes negative, as deflationary spiral continues (15-Jun-2016)
  
  
• Explanation of Price/Earnings ratio and Stock Valuations (28-Aug-2015)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, consumer price index, cpi,
Bureau of Labor Statistics, BLS,
inflation, deflation, hyperinflation,
velocity of money, M2

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[pbrower2a]

(06-14-2021, 05:26 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 14-Jun-2021 World View: Trump 'illegitimate'

(06-14-2021, 10:09 AM)David Horn Wrote: >   My God John.  Get some other sources, if this is what you actually
>   believe.  Going down your list:

>  
[*]No one thinks 2016 was illegitimate, just incredibly
>   stupid.

(06-14-2021, 12:58 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: >   I concur with this.

[*]

Not surprisingly, you two are completely full of shit.

I keep telling you that you are totally ignorant, and have no idea
what's going on, because you're only allowed to know what your
Democrat Party masters let you know.

Once again: You are totally ignorant.

*** Hillary Clinton: Trump is an ‘illegitimate president’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/...story.html

Hillary Clinton: Trump is an ‘illegitimate president’

September 26, 2019 at 9:03 p.m. UTC

Hillary Clinton dismissed President Trump as an “illegitimate
president” and suggested that “he knows” that he stole the 2016
presidential election in a CBS News interview to be aired Sunday. ...

Clinton was asked whether it angers her that none of the current
Democratic candidates invoke her on the campaign trail while Trump’s
rally crowds still break out into “lock her up” chants.

“No, it doesn’t kill me because he knows he’s an illegitimate
president,” she said. “I believe he understands that the many varying
tactics they used, from voter suppression and voter purging to hacking
to the false stories — he knows that — there were just a bunch of
different reasons why the election turned out like it did.” ...

In June, former president Jimmy Carter used similar language to
diminish Trump’s presidency. Carter said that in his view Trump lost
the 2016 election and was put in office by the Russians. Asked if he
considered Trump to be illegitimate, Carter said, “Based on what I
just said, which I can’t retract.”

[*]

Did I say that I know everything? I doubt that the GOP would offer me anything other than disinformation. 

I have said that the GOP and its front groups probably cheated with dirty tricks that are either marginally legal or impossible to prove in 2016. I know little about what happened in other states, but I saw evidence that someone hacked the Democrats' database of potential voters. The hacking caused Democrats to get out likely Trump votes, o0r so went the story. I did canvassing, and at the end I crossed a county line to canvass solely for African-American votes. 

Disrupting the electioneering of the Other Side may not be vote fraud, but it is a dirty trick. If it involves hacking the computer programs of the other side... well, hacking is for all practical purposes "cyber-burglary". Instead of stealing tangible valuables such as gold coins or doing vandalism of tangible materials, the cyber-burglars steal or vandalize precious data. 

I can't prove anything, and Michigan was not enough. I can't prove whether it was the GOP, a front group such as ALEC, or a foreign intelligence service (most likely the Russian FSB). Except for the dumbest of them, burglars do what they can to avoid leaving evidence or causing a stir... or keeping evidence such as loot that might connect them to the crime. Hackers do not leave DNA, and there is no chance of them leaving fingerprints behind or having an unpleasant encounter with a dog (being seen running from a dog that is usually reputed for docility, or leaving a trail of blood after experiencing one of the nastiest bites in the animal world -- which traces one to the burglary). If it is still in the whodunit stage, the solution is now prevention. We obviously can't rely upon "Sherlock Holmes", "Hercule Poirot", "Lieutenant Columbo", or "Jessica Fletcher"  to solve this.

There is no evasion. Trump is not only incompetent as a leader except in the one thing that demagogues do well (stirring up discontent among the disaffected people who see their world passing away from them) but pervasively wicked. He is so incompetent a businessman that a casino that he owned went bankrupt! Can you imagine losing money in such a money machine as a casino? The only economic activities at which he was successful was as a landlord (and he was lucky to have his holdings heavily in New York City instead of such dumps as Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and St. Louis; owning property in a booming community is a gold mine), operating beauty pageants, and in making some mindless television (such as his Apprentice, in which much of the shtick is that he says to some schmuck dumb enough to get on his show "You're fired!"   

It's not surprising that I could "fire" his dreadful game show for something else very fast.  

We've had inept (Andrew Johnson), gullible (Grant), aloof (Coolidge), corrupt (Harding), unduly-rigid (Hoover), devious (Nixon), and clueless (Dubya) Presidents... but Donald Trump has acted as if a temporary majority of only one half of America is to get anything from the government. Everybody else is to be burned, humiliated, and dismissed. With a President like Reagan or Obama one at least sees some effort to reach out to people on the other side (at that Reagan was far more effective). Donald Trump is an extreme narcissist bordering on a sociopath. You get nothing from him unless you are drawn into his circle and share the risks of involvement in shady dealings. 

He had the Department of Justice spying on political opponents and upon journalists. 

Donald Trump is a right-wing version of Robert Mugabe.

[David Horn]

(06-14-2021, 05:26 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 14-Jun-2021 World View: Trump 'illegitimate'

(06-14-2021, 10:09 AM)David Horn Wrote: My God John.  Get some other sources, if this is what you actually believe.  Going down your list:

• No one thinks 2016 was illegitimate, just incredibly stupid.

(06-14-2021, 12:58 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I concur with this.

Not surprisingly, you two are completely full of shit.

I keep telling you that you are totally ignorant, and have no idea what's going on, because you're only allowed to know what your Democrat Party masters let you know.

Once again: You are totally ignorant.

*** Hillary Clinton: Trump is an ‘illegitimate president’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/...story.html

Hillary Clinton: Trump is an ‘illegitimate president’

September 26, 2019 at 9:03 p.m. UTC

Hillary Clinton dismissed President Trump as an “illegitimate president” and suggested that “he knows” that he stole the 2016 presidential election in a CBS News interview to be aired Sunday. ...

Clinton was asked whether it angers her that none of the current Democratic candidates invoke her on the campaign trail while Trump’s rally crowds still break out into “lock her up” chants.

“No, it doesn’t kill me because he knows he’s an illegitimate president,” she said. “I believe he understands that the many varying tactics they used, from voter suppression and voter purging to hacking to the false stories — he knows that — there were just a bunch of different reasons why the election turned out like it did.” ...

In June, former president Jimmy Carter used similar language to diminish Trump’s presidency. Carter said that in his view Trump lost the 2016 election and was put in office by the Russians. Asked if he considered Trump to be illegitimate, Carter said, “Based on what I just said, which I can’t retract.”

Of the two, I'm more prone to take Carter seriously, but let's examine the time frame: right in the middle of the first impeachment.  A lot was said then, and some may prove true when the historians get a more thorough look.  Until then, Trump gets 2016 in much the same way that GWB got 2000, but please don't tell me that he was as pure as driven snow.  There are just too many first-hand accounts of his misbehavior, with Ukraine legitimately impeachable and several other actions certainly illegal.  He didn't bring down the ire of 1,000 former prosecutors from both parties because of his saintly acts.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 15-Jun-2021 World View: Trolling

(06-15-2021, 12:53 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: > Did I say that I know everything?

Bullshit. Here's what's actually going on.

You're fully aware that for five years the Democrats have led a full
frontal assault on the US Constitution and the Trump presidency.
Democrats have lied and committed crimes at every stage, knowing that
they would be protected by the the sleazy left-wing press, like CNN
and the NY Times, and by trolls like you. This culminated in the
rigging of the 2020 election and false charges of insurrection, and a
Stalinist censorship regime to prevent anyone from speaking out about
the Democrat party crimes.

You're fully aware of all this and, as usual, you're lying about it,
because now you want to accuse the Republicans of treason for the
horrible crime of wanting to audit the election results. So now
you're lying by pretending that the Democrats did not commit actual
treason, which they did, because lying about that is convenient for
you.

You're a typical Democrat. You lie at every turn, and you lie about
your lies. You're a Democrat party troll, possibly even a paid troll.

By the way, kudos to the US Constitutional system and its federal
government that has survived years of attempts by the Democrats to
destroy the Constitution. It proves again how brilliant the US
Constitution is to have survived this destructive onslaught by the
Democrats.

[pbrower2a]

(06-15-2021, 02:46 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 15-Jun-2021 World View: Trolling

(06-15-2021, 12:53 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: >   Did I say that I know everything?

Bullshit.  Here's what's actually going on.

You're fully aware that for five years the Democrats have led a full
frontal assault on the US Constitution and the Trump presidency.
Democrats have lied and committed crimes at every stage, knowing that
they would be protected by the the sleazy left-wing press, like CNN
and the NY Times, and by trolls like you.  This culminated in the
rigging of the 2020 election and false charges of insurrection, and a
Stalinist censorship regime to prevent anyone from speaking out about
the Democrat party crimes.

Trump made himself fair game for challenges to his credibility. It goes beyond one lapse; he is little more than moral lapses. Democrats played a beat-the-cheat strategy and won. Liberals saw much to mock about Donald Trump. Trump handed that to them on a silver platter. 

Quote:You're fully aware of all this and, as usual, you're lying about it,
because now you want to accuse the Republicans of treason for the
horrible crime of wanting to audit the election results.  So now
you're lying by pretending that the Democrats did not commit actual
treason, which they did, because lying about that is convenient for
you.

There was a prescribed recount in Wisconsin. Trump still lost. Late votes did not come in in Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia; those were only counted last. Trump was ahead in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin until those votes started to be counted by choi ce; they were already counted by number of votes. 

I have a simple explanation of why Trump lost in 2020 after winning in 2016: about 6% of the electorate of 2016 either died or went incompetent to vote, and that part of the electorate was about 5% more R than D. A similar number of voters entered the electorate, mostly young, and they were about 60-40 Democratic. That is roughly a 1.6% swing of the vote from R to D, and that was enough for Biden to win Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Donald Trump and the GOP really have little to offer young voters.

Unless you have good cause to believe that the massive D vote in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee was fraudulent because it heavily went heavily Democratic -- that happens all the time. (That vote may have been depressed in 2016 and was not in 2020, but that is more complicated than demographics. There were dirty tricks that were legally shady but hard to prove in 2016, but that is no longer relevant). 

We have rules defining who wins elections from the Presidency to the drain commissioner. (Where I live, that is an important, if very local office, as that person can decide who can drain a swamp and who can't). Those do not change for the convenience of an incumbent. Trump committed a felony just by asking the Georgia Secretary of State to 'find' him enough votes to win the state's electoral votes. It's called wire fraud, and many white-collar crooks are in federal penitentiaries  for trying to get someone to commit a crime during a telephone conversation or transact funds in crimes through wire transactions.  Trump asked the Attorney-General of Georgia to commit electoral fraud on his behalf. 

Quote:You're a typical Democrat.  You lie at every turn, and you lie about
your lies.  You're a Democrat party troll, possibly even a paid troll.

Disagreeing with you is not lying. 

Quote:By the way, kudos to the US Constitutional system and its federal
government that has survived years of attempts by the Democrats to
destroy the Constitution.  It proves again how brilliant the US
Constitution is to have survived this destructive onslaught by the
Democrats.

And kudos to 81 million American people for thwarting Donald Trump's efforts to establish a dictatorial regime that runs roughshod over human rights.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 16-Jun-2021 World View: Putin press conference

Putin held an hour-long press conference, following his meeting with
Biden. As usual, Putin was extremely combative, and took on every
question with an agressive response, often claiming that the United
States was worse.

For me the most interesting exchange occurred when some
hostile-sounding American reporter asked why all the opposition
figures in Russia are in jail or dead.

Putin responded that dozens of innocent peaceful protesters from the
January 6 protests have been rounded up and jailed for months without
charges. He also alluded to Ashli Babbitt, a woman who was shot dead
by the capitol police for no reason, and about which the capitol
police and the Democrats are stonewalling.

This is in fact what's been going on. It's being censored by the
mainstream news, though it's been covered in detail by Tucker Carlson
on Fox News and on several conservative news sites.

Having rigged the 2020 election, the Democrats are turning into a
full-fledged fascist regime, invading homes across the country and
locking up Trump supporters without charges, engineering a censorship
regime with the purpose of censoring any opposing voices, and enabling
it's own antifa-blm fascist militia.

It's ironic that it takes someone like Putin to call attention to
this. CNN, MSNBC, the NY Times, the WaPost, and liberal bloggers
online have turned into nothing but worthless trolls, lying about what
happened and lying about their lies, saying whatever they want to
promote the fascist Democrat censorship regime.

According to some conservative bloggers, Attorney General Merrick
Garland is preparing for military action in Arizona, as the ongoing
Maricopa County election audit is proceeding, and may well find that
Trump should have won the state of Arizona. This finding, if it
occurs, would be a major political threat to the Democrat party
fascist regime.

The next event is Biden's press conference, which is just starting as
I'm typing this. I would expect him to pale in comparison to Putin.
In a press conference two days ago, Biden was two hours late and then
seemed confused, and he mixed up Syria and Libya several times.
Hopefully, Biden will be better prepared this time.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 16-Jun-2021 World View: Insurrection

spottybrowncow Wrote:> At Biden's conference he just repeated the lie that a capital
> police officer was killed by the January 6 "insurrection." It's
> not surprising that these people, being godless, also have no
> shame. Their word is worth absolutely nothing.

I saw that too. Biden is a lying jackass. The only person killed on
January 6 was Ashli Babbitt, by a capitol policeman, a murder that the
Democrats are covering up. But the leftist trolls will never correct
Biden.

The evidence is growing that the January 6 "insurrection" was
engineered by the Democrats themselves, taking advantage of Trump's
planned peaceful protest, in order to create a crisis that they could
use to create some kind of national police force like the Nazi Storm
Troopers.

It's hard to say what was the most farcical moment in Biden's
press conference, when he stumbled through a few questions
from pre-selected reporters.

But my vote would go to his announcement that he provided Putin with a
list of 16 infrastructure items in the United States that Putin should
not attack. Apparently anything else is ok to attack, but those 16
are off-limits. Fer sure. Biden is stupider than a bag of hammers.

[David Horn]

(06-16-2021, 08:19 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ...  The only person killed on January 6 was Ashli Babbitt, by a capitol policeman, a murder that the Democrats are covering up.  But the leftist trolls will never correct...

Setting aside the obvious point, let me make another. You are in your home and a screaming mob descends on your house and beats a hole through the door. The mob decides to enter your home, and the first person in the mob begins to climb in. Are you adequately threatened to use deadly force to defend yourself and your family? If not, why not?

[pbrower2a]

(06-16-2021, 12:43 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 16-Jun-2021 World View: Putin press conference

Putin held an hour-long press conference, following his meeting with
Biden.  As usual, Putin was extremely combative, and took on every
question with an aggressive response, often claiming that the United
States was worse.

Putin is ex-KGB. "Are you still lynching negroes?"

Quote:For me the most interesting exchange occurred when some
hostile-sounding American reporter asked why all the opposition
figures in Russia are in jail or dead.

Putin responded that dozens of innocent peaceful protesters from the
January 6 protests have been rounded up and jailed for months without
charges.  He also alluded to Ashli Babbitt, a woman who was shot dead
by the capitol police for no reason, and about which the capitol
police and the Democrats are stonewalling.

...except that our opposition is part of the Establishment. That people connected to the ideology of the Tea Party such as the Oath Keepers could be so heavily involved in the violent effort to nullify a Presidential election is a complete shock. People are not going to be prosecuted for what they think. Physical assaults on law enforcement are crimes, and the reason matters little other than legitimate self-defense in the rare cases of excessive force. Chasing elected officials out of a scheduled session is an assault on lawful government. 

Many people still believe in the stated objectives of the Hard Right that is still part of the Establishment. 

Quote:This is in fact what's been going on.  It's being censored by the
mainstream news, though it's been covered in detail by Tucker Carlson
on Fox News and on several conservative news sites.

FoX News gravely distorts the news. It is programmed to create a mental state. If it isn't a one-sided view of political life, it is stories of violent crime intended to make people scared or tugs at (conservative) heartstrings. "War against Christmas", you know. Yes, the world and America as a whole are changing. I can imagine many people scared that their precious children might go to the big state university with the intent of getting the preparation to be a schoolteacher, county agent, accountant, or engineer and get exposed to exotic ideas, faiths, and people. They might even find that they are attracted to same-sex relationships or decide that they want to have a heterosexual relationship with someone who looks very much unlike them. Or they might encounter readings from Karl Marx in the syllabus for a history or economics class. 

So perhaps you decide that you would prefer that your precious son stay home and be a farm laborer instead of encountering such. Guess what? He might recognize that the sister of one of his fellow workers at the feed lot is cute and has a rich cultural tradition that offers more. The Mexican-American culture might seduce him. Or while your precious daughter waits tables at a diner off Exit 130 on Interstate 62 on some lonely night she meets some black guy and wonders whether the rumors are true about black **cks. A one-night stand ensues at the no-tell motel at Exit 145 on her day off. Rural life is boring, and he introduces her to the "urban contemporary" music that you consider barbarous... and maybe his black **ck. Economic distress is not good for promoting some vague, stale tradition. Or perhaps she meets some fellow with a German surname (much of rural America is rich in German-Americans, as many German immigrants chose agriculture as their American Dream) who believes in most of the Bible -- just not the part that begins with Matthew 1. 

It is impossible to fully insulate children or young adults from the influence of other cultures. The real contest is not between tradition and nihilism but instead between cultures. Most people end up picking and choosing between the elements of different traditions. So there is a piñata and pizza at the birthday party of Scandinavian-American kids. Neither is native to any Scandinavian country, and neither is the bonsai plant in the house nor Italian opera.  Cultural purity isn't so easy to protect, and the stultifying effort and stale result are both rarely worth the consequences.            

OK, there are crazy ideas out there, and people will encounter those no matter what their educational level. I look at Marxism and recognize that the fault is not so much with Marxist thought as it is with an economic order that fits a Marxist stereotype of how capitalism works. I have watched bits and pieces of FoX News,  and it is not good for my blood pressure. "Get angry! Be afraid! Your world is falling apart!"

Speaking of Marxists... the insurrection at the Capitol looks more like the Bolshevik takeover of the Winter Palace in Petrograd in 1917 than like anything else. One big difference is that our institutions are much stronger. I do not want our political life decided more by the willingness of people to use violence than by popular votes. Next time the people who storm the Capitol could bring Soviet flags and images of Lenin, Mao,  and Castro. If you want to believe that only deluded people could fail to recognize the Greatness of Donald Trump, then more people think him horrid. Let's start with the conservative value of monogamy. Did Obama consort with porn stars? Did Dubya? Did they sleep with anything that moved? Monogamy is far safer for children than is dumping a wife who turns 40 for someone who looks like the Playmate of the Month. 

Well, maybe some parts of our world need to fall apart. That is progress.  We don't rely upon poultices and medicinal leeches any more when we have better means in medicine. We generally recognize that workers need a stake in the economic system if they are not to fall for some demagogue who offers Marxism-Leninism as real-world progress instead of suffering in This World on behalf of plutocrats for pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die. (Consumerism is better and safer than either oppression for traditional elites or the Marxist-Leninist madhouse).     

Quote:Having rigged the 2020 election, the Democrats are turning into a
full-fledged fascist regime, invading homes across the country and
locking up Trump supporters without charges, engineering a censorship
regime with the purpose of censoring any opposing voices, and enabling
it's own antifa-blm fascist militia.

Bullhist! Donald Trump is the closest thing to a fascist dictator that America has ever had. Whether I go through the infamous lists of Laurence Britt or Umberto Eco, Trump has gone much further down the road to a fascist Hell. Maybe he isn't so competent at it as were Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Pinochet, or Satan Hussein, but we all know where his heart is. America still has tycoons, executives, and big landowners who still believe that no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as such makes them richer, makes them more powerful or enforces their rule, and fosters their sybaritic indulgence. Much of the distress in human history comes from people believing that they are entitled to live like sultans while treating everyone else as serfs, slaves, or zeks -- and being able to enforce such. What ideological rationale people use for treating other people badly matters little. They can be pharaohs, a praetorian guard, medieval lords, slave-owning planters, colonial adventurers,  tycoons, or even a Commie nomenklatura; the effect is just the same. 

Donald Trump is simply a "Berzelius Windrip" except without having ever been to pharmacy school (the reference is to Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here, which didn't happen here until Trump became President. His sort is usually the unwitting cover for people more resolute, ruthless, and organized... and willing to steal anything and kill or imprison anyone. Associated with Donald Trump is our modern Winfield Mattoon Scott (from Seven Days in May), the real-life Michael "Quisling" Flynn. 

People are still free to believe and promote their anti-abortion, anti-environment, anti-union, classist, militarist, racist, anti-science, Christian Dominionist ideology. They have no right to expect the rest of us to concur with their dreams.            

Quote:It's ironic that it takes someone like Putin to call attention to
this.  CNN, MSNBC, the NY Times, the WaPost, and liberal bloggers
online have turned into nothing but worthless trolls, lying about what
happened and lying about their lies, saying whatever they want to
promote the fascist Democrat censorship regime.

Pot. Kettle. Black. 

Quote:According to some conservative bloggers, Attorney General Merrick
Garland is preparing for military action in Arizona, as the ongoing
Maricopa County election audit is proceeding, and may well find that
Trump should have won the state of Arizona.  This finding, if it
occurs, would be a major political threat to the Democrat party
fascist regime.

Some bloggers will tell you that human superiority is an ethnic hierarchy in which the noblest examples of Humanity are those that best fit some Aryan ideal of tall, blue-eyed, blond peoples and that Humanity falls off from there. Modern Greeks fall short of that standard (never mind that when the Greeks were establishing what constitutes beauty and common sense in the Western World, while my barbarous German and Scandinavian hunter-gatherer ancestors were picking berries in the summer and hunting wild boars for bare survival in the winter and trying to protect themselves from bears. And don't let me start discussing the Jews who long ago established the bulk of the self-evident morality of the West. (I am neither Greek nor Jewish, although I well fit five Jewish stereotypes. Basically, any German-sounding surname can be a Jewish surname. No, I do not have an oversized schnozz, but when I had colorful hair it was somewhat reddish).   

Quote:The next event is Biden's press conference, which is just starting as
I'm typing this.  I would expect him to pale in comparison to Putin.
In a press conference two days ago, Biden was two hours late and then
seemed confused, and he mixed up Syria and Libya several times.
Hopefully, Biden will be better prepared this time.

Donald Trump mixes up right and wrong and truth and falsehood. That is infinitely worse. Vladimir Putin does that too, only he is more cunning and ruthless -- and knows what he is doing. But if you would rather be in Russia than America because you prefer Putin to Biden, Aeroflot can get you there.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 16-Jun-2021 World View: Some Links to News

jmparret Wrote:> Got any links?

The news today is heavily censored by the Democrat censorship regime.
WaPost, NYT, BBC, CNN, MSNBC, etc., very heavily censor all news
blocked by the Democrats and media trolls.

Fox News has become somewhat schizophrenic. All their news and
commentary shows very carefully avoid going too far in violating the
censorship regime, because otherwise they would lose access to
administration press briefings and such.

However, the three evening opinion shows -- Tucker Carlson at 8 pm ET,
Sean Hannity at 9 pm ET, and Laura Ingraham at 10 pm ET -- are free to
violate the Democrat censorship regime, and they do so every day,
reporting on such things as antifa-blm riots, Hunter's laptops and
Hunter's racist epithets, the January 6 insurrection hoax, and so
forth. These three shows also have very high ratings, usually higher
than CNN and MSNBC combined. Carlson, Hannity and Ingraham and their
families are also regularly threatened with violence by Democrat party
fascists. Apparently Fox News is providing their families with
protection.

Special mention has to be made of the new late night "chat show" on
Fox -- the Greg Gutfeld show (Gutfeld!) at 11 pm ET. This show is a
throwback to the days of the likes of Johnny Carson, when late night
hosts made fun of politicians, and the shows were actually funny.
Kimmel, Colbert and Shannon tell jokes, but only within the Democrat
censorship regime rules, so they're pretty boring. Some of Gutfeld's
jokes fall flat, but mostly this show is a breath of fresh air, and
fun to watch.

The google search engine and youtube are actively blocking references
to conservative opinions. I still use google as my default search
engine since it has the best features, but if a subject is sensitive,
then switch to duckduckgo.com, which is far superior to google in many
news areas.

The following web page lists links to the latest artices on the 2020
election vote recounts and the latest news about the "insurrection"
hoax:

https://fritz-aviewfromthebeach.blogspot...gents.html

That's a very weird web site -- https://fritz-aviewfromthebeach.blogspot.com
-- A View From The Beach. This site has been up since 2010.

Most of the blog entries are about the daily trip to beach by Fritz
who, as far as I can tell, makes a living by searching for shark's
teeth at low tide. I don't know why anyone would want to buy a
shark's tooth, but a quick search online revealed that the best
shark's teeth can sell for hundreds of dollars each.

So some of the blog entries are picturesque descriptions of Fritz's
daily trips to the beach, along with his dog Skye and his wife
Georgia.

Many of the blog entries are pictures of hot models wearing skimpy
bikinis, often holding fish. He has at least one of these every day.

But almost every day there's a "news" blog entry about the 2020
election audit, the "insurrection" hoax, and so forth, with links to
other (mostly conservative) blogs and news sites describing what's
going on.

This web site is performing a major public service, by serving as a
kind of "search engine" for the news that google and facebook and the
media trolls are censoring.